What is Coding?

Under the treatment

Coding of alcohol abuse and other addictions has been arousing interest for 30 years already since this term was introduced into psychiatry by Dr. Dovzhenko from Feodosia (the Crimea) in the 70s of the previous century. After the stress combat therapy (SCT) was officially acknowledged by the Ministry of Health of the USSR in 1984 it became widely spread in all the republics.

The method seemed to be so simple and effective (over 80% of the patients who had undergone the treatment ceased alcohol abuse for longer periods) gave rise to numerous ‘fraud healers’ and ‘coding specialists’ who had never even followed any course on medicine. With no idea of what the treatment includes they caused lots of harm, first of all by missing out the steps of the treatment. These so called ‘healers’ travelled around cities and towns to give a session of ‘coding’ and faded out with no sense of responsibility for the work done, leaving no address, telephone number nor even their last name to the patients. The only thing they craved for was easy money.

What is coding then?

First of all, it is only one of the steps in the treatment and not the treatment as it is.

Secondly, it is just a name of a step in treatment like, for instance, programming, bio-management, etc.

Some psychiatrists, narcologists, psychotherapists and neurophysiologists today have suggested that they should use these terms instead of coding although the general mechanism of this method lies on the surface.

Thirdly, it is a special hypnosis based on the patient’s willingness to overcome a bad habit.

Just imagine you have learned about an earthquake. If you let this information past your ears and it hasn’t received any emotional response from you, you will forget about it soon. But if you got excited with this piece of news (your relatives or friends have been involved) you will then focus your attention on this tragedy, become literally obsessed with it, you will thus turn on the mind energy and change the state of consciousness, in other words, you have made a hypnotic set, or following Dr. Dovzhenko, you have been ‘coded’. Human’s mind is a sort of a computer where you can enter any codes, programmes or make installations.

That’s what the method of Dr. Dovzhenko is based on. By using words to persuade a person, the doctor blocks, sets a programme and encodes definite parts of the brain which are responsible for particular addictions (such as alcohol abuse and nicotine addiction, etc. ). It is well-known that one can not only kill a man with a word but save him as well. It depends on the word’s nature lying beneath if it’s good or evil. Words as information carriers can bring about great changes in the whole body. That’s why one can’t say that hypnotic treatment (or coding, bio-management, programming) makes a person a senseless robot that does what it is ordered to, because any unacceptable hypnotic suggestion would be rejected by a patient. We are being born with certain features of character and attitude. In the course of life and education we acquire skills, form habits which determine our own views and behavior. Thus we get attached to beliefs and religions which are the ‘codes’ out life is settled upon.

However one shouldn’t think anyone could perform hypnotic suggestion saying whatever he wants to. Apart from education one should have talent for that as well as in any other profession whether it’s composing music, writing poetry or cooking. One should possess great talents in medicine as well. The ability to receive hypnosis is rather important but not enough for a patient. A doctor should be able to say such words that would meet patient’s response and satisfy his beliefs and expectations.

Dr. Dovzhenko used to say: ‘I believe that words are material by nature and thus could affect various body processes. What I do is setting a patient to a ‘meaning code’ whereas words acquire a new meaning and start up a new life in the patient’s head. They raise new brain energy, activate potentials of the body to fight off the disease’.

What Dr. Dovzhenko did being a psychotherapist was due his very approach to the matter and just for this reason all his methods he used could be called ‘the Dovzhenko methods’.

However if one calls himself a Dovzhenko follower wouldn’t mean that he must do the very things Dovzhenko was doing. One must learn to think the way Dovzhenko was thinking and accept his attitude to people, psychotherapy as a subject and his own professional self. Knowing what one should do does not mean knowing how to do it. It’s important to perceive the spirit of the Dovzhenko methods and not just study his techniques. The only leading principle in therapy should be patient’s well-being.